These lying pigments facing you,with every charm brush can supply,set up false premises of colorto lead astray the unwary eye;Here, against ghastly tolls of time,bland flattery has staked a claim,defying the power of passing yearsto wipe out memory and name.

And here, in this hollow artifice,frail blossom hanging on the wind,vain pleading in a foolish cause:poor shield against what fate has wrought,all efforts fail and in the end,a body goes to dust, to shade, to nought.

This that you see, the false presentment planned With finest art and all the colored shows And reasonings of shade, doth but discloseThe poor deceits by earthly senses fanned!Here where in constant flattery expand Excuses for the stains that old age knows, Pretexts against the years' advancing snows,The footprints of old seasons to withstand;

'Tis but vain artifice of scheming minds; 'Tis but a flower fading on the winds; 'Tis but a useless protest against Fate;'Tis but stupidity without a thought, A lifeless shadow, if we meditate;'Tis death, tis dust, tis shadow, yea, 'tis nought.

This artifice of colors you perceive;The painter cunningly portrays his skillFor synthesizing colors that will killThe very truths your senses once believed.In flattery this art has placed its betThat you'll excuse how horror stings the years,How time will stab with every step it nears,Dissecting time, your age, so you forgetThat this is all an imitated grace,

Is just a flower lapping in the wind,Is just a vain facade disguising fate,Is now a labor foolishly misplaced,Is now an old obsession withered thin,Is dead, is dust, a shadow, all for naught!

This that you gaze on, colorful deceit, that so immodestly displays art's favors, with its fallacious arguments of colors is to the senses cunning counterfeit, this on which kindness practiced to delete from cruel years accumulated horrors, constraining time to mitigate its rigors, and thus oblivion and age defeat,

is but an artifice, a sop of vanity, is but a flower by the breezes bowed, is but a ploy to counter destiny, is but a foolish labor, ill-employed, is but a fancy, and, as all may see, is but cadaver, ashes, shadow, void.

This, that you see, this colored treachery, which, by displaying all the charms of art, with those false syllogisms of its huesdeceptively subverts the sense of sight; this, in which false praise has vainly sought to shun the horrors of the passing years, and conquering of time the cruelty, to overcome age and oblivion's might,

is a vain artifice cautiously wrought, is a fragile bloom caught by the wind, is, to ward off fate, pure uselessness; is a foolish effort that's gone wrong, is a weakened zeal, and, rightly seen, is corpse, is dust, is gloom, is nothingness.